Accepting the Oscar for "The Sting LA Style" are Roger Cardinal
Mahony and Archbishop Jose Gomez for their stellar performances in a remake of
"The Sting." Produced, directed, and orchestrated by the Vatican,
it is the story of two bishops who feign fighting with each other in order to collect vast sums of money from an unsuspecting laity. Gomez plays the part of a
white knight who rides in, releases documents (which was his legal obligation),
derides his predecessor, and saves the Los Angeles
diocese from the last vestiges of child sex abuse. Mahony, for his part, takes
umbrage at being silenced by his protege and being blamed for his dastardly
deeds. Could we expect anything less from the diocese that contains Hollywood?
Certainly not!

Anyone believing the sincerity of the this "made for public
consumption" feud should reach into their Tinker Bell pouches and throw some
pixie dust on themselves so they can remain in La La Land. Are we really
supposed to believe that Gomez was unaware of the extent of Mahony's
malfeasance? No more than that insulting excuse that Mahony made when he
proffered, "nothing in my training prepared me for priests raping children." If
true, we ought to put both their faces on the Naivete Awards! Mahony for not
knowing that the rape, sodomization, and molestation of children was a heinous,
immoral, and criminal act. Gomez, who obviously doesn't read, deserves his
award in honor of his empty protestations that he knew nothing of how bad
things were under Mahony. Really, did this man live under a rock for the past
10 years? As Mahony said, "Gomez never complained about me before." These pernicious
lines were written by the Vatican spin masters to add
drama to the feud, and Mahony followed the script perfectly, giving a convincing
performance penned to create the illusion of a genuine feud. "Please Don't
Throw Me into the Briar Patch, Archbishop Gomez!" wink, wink.

Why the wink, wink? Money, money, and more money!

Mahony has spent untold millions ,maybe even a billion
dollars on PR Firms, lawyers, and buying the silence of survivors. As early as
2002, he hired one of the most expensive PR Firms in LA, Weber Shandwick, which
was rumored to bill at $500 per hour. Mahony then hired J. Michael
Hennigan, of Hennigan Bennett and Dorman, a creme de la creme lawyer, who in
turn fired Weber Shandwick and hired Sitrick and Co., a Century City-based firm
whose forte was crisis management. Can you see the dollars flowing out of the
LA Diocesan coffers? The outflow begun in 2002 has continued for over ten years.
It is not hard to imagine the coffers of the PR and Legal firms unnecessarily swelling
at the laity's expense.

Since then, there have been suits, countersuits, appeals, and
more appeals, especially when it came to the Herculean legal effort put forth, over
the past six years aimed at preventing abuse files from being made public. The
outflow of money had to be enormous, but because there are no checks and
balances, no transparency, the sheep in LA's pews will never know exactly how
much money Mahony spent keeping up his image, countering suits, filing appeals -
and that doesn't count the six-hundred-fifty-million payout to survivors. The
irony is magnificent. Hundreds of millions of dollars spent to protect an image
that was ultimately sullied by his protege. Truly Machiavellian!

The Sting LA Style is on now because those monies have to be
replaced! Mahony and Gomez publicly pretend to dislike each other like Newman
and Redford did in the Sting, but the goal is not to
fleece a mobster; their goal is to take more money from the laity. Los
Angeles is the largest diocese in the richest country
in the world, and both Gomez and Mahony are company men. Only those who still
believe in the Easter Bunny would be naive enough to believe that the Vatican
would give this prize diocese to anyone but a company man. This script was
written as a contingency plan when Gomez was given the nod; of the five million
Catholics in the diocese forty percent of LA Catholics are Latino.
Coincidence?

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Did the Vatican's
plan work? Did Gomez become the knight in shining armor for forbidding Mahony
to speak in public? Yes! Did this unprecedented move (according to the press)
make national headlines? Yes! It has been national news and editorial fodder
for over a week. Did the pew people all over the country bob their heads in
agreement while saying, "It's about time!"? Yes! Is Mahony the bad guy? Yes! Is Mahony feigning
hurt feelings? Absolutely! Is Gomez being perceived as the good guy? Yes! Has
Mahony's lifestyle materially changed? No! He swore a blood oath to the pope,
and this charade is a small price to pay for all he has been given.

Several papers have pronounced a bishop silencing another
bishop as unprecedented. Not so. This same scenario was recently played out in
Ireland where Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, made a big public display
of demanding the resignations of three bishops, who like Mahony, had been
instrumental in the cover-up of the sexual abuse of minors. After a suitable and
very public fight, the bishops agreed to tender their resignations to Pope
Benedict XVI who promptly refused to accept them. Martin went down as an Irish
hero for battling the Vatican,
and the three bishops went back to work, business as usual.

There is a very little known rite created by, oddly enough, Benedict
XIV who wrote the rules for the degradation of a bishop. The
Rite of Degradation starts out as follows: " If the degradandus [he
who is about to be degraded] be an archbishop, the degrading prelate
removes his pallium, saying: 'We deprive thee of the rights and privileges of
the episcopal dignity, symbolized in this pallium, since thou hast abused them.'"
If Benedict XVI had the chutzpah to use this rite, it would indeed be unprecedented!

However, I digress, and therefore, back to the point of this
exposition: the fine acting performance of Roger Cardinal Mahony and his
protege Archbishop Jose Gomez, the purpose of which is to put Gomez in the
position of white knight so that he can ask for and receive more money from the
good people of the Los Angeles diocese. Money, which most likely will cover the
legal bills accumulated by his predecessor and those which may arise from
criminal charges, if any, filed when the recently released documents have been
examined.

Despite the protestations of the church to the contrary, the
church can only use laity money. The Roman Catholic Church makes and sells
nothing of material value. Therefore, they can only exist by virtue of what
they either take or that which is given to them. The hundreds of millions of
dollars spent defending the indefensible can be traced back to the laity's
pocket one way or another.

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According to the LA Times, Gomez has already been in touch
with the New York Company, Guidance in Giving Inc. He is using professionals,
like his predecessor, to study whether or not this charade worked and when the pew Catholics of Los Angeles will be ripe enough for another round of financial plucking. That folks is what
this drama between Gomez and Mahony is all about.

Vinnie Nauheimer is a writer, photographer and artist whose work may be found on websites around the world. He has authored hundreds of essays, two books, two plays and a number of poems. Most of his writing over the past 10 years has dealt with the (more...)